I’d like to think that no one ever tried it, and the boiled frog metaphor is just what we might imagine would happen if we fired up the Bunsen burner under that beaker. The lesson from the metaphor, even if the science may be a bit iffy, is that things around us deteriorate progressively at a pace we can’t perceive.
As a metaphor for political life, it warns us how easy it is to forget to be shocked and to accept that things have always been at least as bad, though they really weren’t. Like frogs having their energy sapped and eventually their flesh cooked, we delight in the tingly feeling of the bubbles that rise from the water as oxygen is squeezed out of our bath.
The study of authoritarianism, which peaked during the last trials of the perpetrators of unimaginable crimes committed before the midpoint of the last century, is re-emerging from the dust of historical and philosophical interest to become a timely manual for interpreting our times. This is by no means an exclusively local phenomenon. On the contrary, as right-wing leaders in the West shake their fists at globalisation, apparently unaware of the irony, the concentration of power and its divorce from truth is as global a phenomenon of our decade as the moonwalk was for the 1980s.
Still, if you wanted an analysis of the policies of the White House, you’d be reading the work of people whose job it is to watch it closely. I’ll keep it local. Here are some bubbles that may have tickled your hide last week in the boiling water you’re floating in, which have delighted some into distraction.
There’s a trial underway for a gang of criminals long known to the police, suspected for decades of having a significant role in the local organised crime scene with connections to other mafia hotspots in the Mediterranean. They are charged with two murders, connected only by the identity of the alleged perpetrators. Both are victims of the mafia. I don’t mean to diminish the unbearable loss for the relatives and friends of Carmel Chircop by underlining the fact that the killing of Daphne was the silencing of a journalist investigating corruption.
As the evidence is reported in what remains of the national press with sufficient resources and interest to engage with it, a timid civic protest composed of the most undisruptive props imaginable – flowers and candles – is crushed every day by propagandists of the ruling party. The police ignore daily complaints. The public is numb and indifferent. Where dissent should be natural, there’s silence.
Put aside the mental image of discarded flowers and candles, but keep in mind the reference I made to the poorly resourced media that are largely unequipped to adequately cover matters of public interest, such as the trial of the brutal murder of a colleague of theirs.
Some of it had time to cover reports that the university has quietly stopped offering elective courses taught by part-time lecturers. Some students from particularly impacted programmes have complained, and there was what can generously be described as a murmur from the academic community. Why would I refer to this apparently purely cost-cutting exercise in the context of a commentary on the rise of authoritarianism?
Firstly, because I will not assume that this is a purely cost-cutting exercise. But, perhaps more pertinently, I find the relative calm with which the slashing of budgets in the university’s academic programmes has been received to be stunningly muted. Where dissent should be natural, there’s silence. It seems like everyone, including intellectuals, has been trained to shut up and grin.
The government is choking voices- Manuel Delia
It should hardly be surprising. Lower down the ranks of the world of education, teachers working in state schools are under explicit instructions never to express any opinions that the government might eventually disagree with, or risk facing punishment. The ombudsman’s office called the policy a breach of rights, which it is. However, even if the policy were to be withdrawn, educators in this country know that the government would seek to punish them for expressing a contrary opinion, and the government would find a way.
Last week, the government also announced plans to empower someone to keep judges and magistrates in line. No power should be granted to anyone without checks to ensure it is used properly. Judges and magistrates are not incapable of misconduct. What remains unclear is how a policing measure will be introduced that doesn’t discourage the judiciary from deciding matters in ways that the government might disapprove.
As I write this, the public has not seen details of the government’s plan on how the judiciary is going to be policed. One would hope there will be adequate safeguards to protect the independence of the judiciary, not because judges and magistrates deserve privileges, but because, if the government accuses you of something, you’d want to know the judge deciding your guilt or innocence is not in thrall to your accusers. One would hope. But consider how the government has been denouncing judges and magistrates hearing cases against senior ruling party figures, and then remember that judges are as human as teachers. Many will heed warnings and threats from a government that does not mind exceeding its powers to squeeze the decisions it wants out of them.
Consider the fact that, at least as far as anyone can see, judges and magistrates appear to have nothing to say about how they and their work are supervised and how their failures are disciplined. Where dissent should be natural, there is silence.
That’s just last week. For each of these three sectors of our community life – the media, education and the courts – we can conduct a detailed survey of small erosions that have been secured over the last few years, each barely perceptible on its own, in the fundamental standards of democratic life.
The government is choking voices, one escaping bubble at a time, securing new small silences in the spaces of community life that are designed to allow thoughts that might resist it.
If you remove the ability to dissent from the media, from schools and universities, and from the courts, what remains is the unchallenged authority of the government.
The trick for them to be able to do it is not to do it all at once. If they woke up one morning and set fire to our democracy, the country would rise in shock and stop them. Instead, they’re wearing our democracy like a glove, one harmless finger at a time, and making us all their voiceless puppets, turning us into sleepy, warm frogs.